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He didn’t cry now. Instead his eyes burned and tears came, the seeping tears that burned, but he didn’t cry.
His whole abdomen was torn with great rolling jolts of pain, pain that doubled him in the darkness of the little shelter,
he felt the hunger sharpen, as it had before, and he stood and held his abdomen until the hunger cramps receded.
His fingers gingerly touched a group of needles that had been driven through his pants and into the fleshy part of his calf. They were stiff and very sharp
A porcupine had stumbled into his shelter and when he had kicked it the thing had slapped him with its tail of quills.
he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work.
It was some form of chalky granite, or a sandstone, but imbedded in it were large pieces of a darker stone, a harder and darker stone.
Clearly there had to be something for the sparks to ignite, some kind of tinder or kindling—but what?
On another trip he looked back and saw the smoke curling up through the trees and realized, for the first time, that he now had the means to make a signal.
They had leathery shells that gave instead of breaking when he squeezed them.
his whole body seemed to convulse with it, but his stomach took it, held it, and demanded more.
with the fire for a friend he knew what a staggering amount of wood it would take.
He moved to the top of the rock ridge that comprised the bluff over his shelter
He had no hooks or string but if he could somehow lure them into the shallows—and make a spear, a small fish spear—he
carving a thin piece off each time, until the thick end tapered down to a needle point.
jammed a piece of wood up into the split to make a two-prong spear
Maybe that was how it really happened, way back when—some primitive man tried to spear fish
A persistent whine, like the insects only more steady with an edge of a roar
fish moved and his eyes jerked sideways to see the ripples but he did not move any other part of his body and did not raise the bow
In the city if he made a mistake usually there was a way to rectify it, make it all right.
The corrosive spray that hit his face seared into his lungs and eyes, blinding him.
